June 21: Evil League of Evil update: The Moscow-Pyongyang axis

In which, Russia and North Korea start a summer of love, and we start the new season and continue presidential campaigns with the same tried, true(?), and tiresome headlines.

Happy summer! Stay cool, but hold the guac

Summer is finally here, and we now enter a comfortably semi-predictable 3-month long news cycle of breathless headlines about everything from climate change (funny how reports of a warming planet rise with the summer climes) to election drama. Pace yourselves and pass the chips (you might need to hold the guac), it’s going to be a bit of a slow burn this summer, with a few nuts to keep things interesting. Speaking of nuts…

Evil League of Evil update: The Moscow-Pyongyang axis

The Evil League of Evil has been somewhat absent from this newsletter in recent weeks, but that’s not to say they’re not up to things. This week, Vladimir Putin was in Pyongyang to visit Kim Jong Un who has emerged as one of the Kremlin’s chief weapons suppliers for Putin’s war in Ukraine. It was a pointed, and no doubt intentional, snub of the peace summit gathering in Switzerland. That’s not to say Russia didn’t present its peace demands. It did. However, the priority was clearly on maintaining the war effort for Russia and building up resilience to the West’s sanctions regime for both countries.

The trip concluded with a formal statement on mutual defense between the two countries, which is a major marker for North Korea who famously only has one alliance  partner - China. This got me thinking. Remember last summer, and at regular intervals, I’ve noted the increasing coordination in foreign policy between China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea? Well, given North Korea’s alliance with China and its newfound arms export market in Russia, it stands to reason that North Korea has effectively positioned itself as a middle man between its much larger alliance partners. My thought is that it's not just North Korean arms and ammo Russia is trying to get access to, but Chinese weapons as well. With North Korea providing laundering services on arms transfers, China could achieve a measure of plausible deniability in its support of Russia’s war efforts. This possibility appears to have occurred to Ukrainian President Zelensky as well. The question is, will American foreign policy leaders finally get serious about treating the Evil League of Evil as a holistic threat?